“The beliefs of the societies were embedded in their myths, and the myths were expressed in images.” George Lankford

I’ve begun painting and research on a body of work to be shown with the Chickasaw nation in November. I’m utilizing imagery from art and artifacts of the Southeastern Indians. A desire to understand more of my Chickasaw heritage caused me to first begin exploring these images and the powerful stories they carry.

Stories are central to my work as an artist and although these particular stories are ancient, I want to encounter them today. In beginning a project like this, my hope is that something important will be revealed through the process. As I go back and look at these stories, I’ll be thinking about and emphasizing the ways these stories bend and move so that they continue to serve us today.

I’m attracted to the idea that trickster narratives appear where mythic thought seeks to mediate opposites … there is a category of mythic narrative, a category of art, that occupies the field between polarities and by that articulates them, simultaneously marking and bridging their differences.